This invention relates to the scanning of documents and the recognition of alphanumeric symbols generally, and particularly to optical scanning and recognition of alphanumeric characters such as E13B, OCRA, OCRB, and Farington 7B type fonts.
The E13B, OCRA, OCRB, and Farington 7B character sets have received widespread use in financial transactions in the United States and abroad. Generally, the characters are recorded on documents such as bank drafts, checks, and other financial documents. For example, E13B type fonts are generally recorded in MICR (magnetic ink character record) form for scanning by a magnetic scanner.
A vidicon camera system is sometimes used to scan the document and to record an image of it for archival and evidentiary purposes while, in a separate operation, a magnetic scanner system is used to read the magnetic-ink characters (e.g., E13B characters). This need for two separate scanner systems to perform two separate operations presents a costly, time-consuming problem. Further, hardware for processing E13B, OCRA, OCRB and Farrington 7B type character is often complex and expensive, and unduly time-consuming in performing character recognition. Also, such hardware often binarizes the entire image, introducing noise into the binarized image and causing loss of image data, making the recognition process more difficult.
A way of providing for image scanning and character recognition that would eliminate such a two-system two-operation requirement, and that would significantly reduce noise and image-processing time, is needed and would be useful.